Would You Like Hepatitis With That?

Over the last couple of months, there have been a few food related incidents that have been quite concerning. You most likely would have heard of these incidents yourself. It’s regarding food quality and more importantly food safety.

In this day and age, food safety really shouldn’t be an issue, but everything has become so industrialised and mass produced by big corporations, that the end consumer is generally the one who suffers.

Take the Nannas frozen berries for example. Berries grown in China, packed and frozen for the Aussie market. But how were we to know that they were grown in completely unsanitary conditions causing them to be contaminated with hepatitis A? Berries are one of my favourite foods. Full of antioxidants and taste great, but I would rather not contract a disease in the process of enjoying them thank you very much!

There was also an incident with a Sydney restaurant serving up tuna from Thailand that caused a number of food poisoning cases. It turns out, the same supplier supplies fish for companies such as John West, Safcol, Greenseas, Coles and Woolworths. Something to ponder…

Now, the main reason for this post is not to scare you away from some of your favourite foods, quite the contrary. What I really want you to think about is where the food you eat comes from. Shaun and I are quite fortunate in that we live in an area surrounded by farms and independently owned stores that specialise in selling locally produced foods. Foods that are governed by the local laws in relation to how it is produced/grown.

We have free range egg farms where you can see the chickens running around the lawns doing their natural thing, berry farms where you can go pick the berries yourself, organic fruit and veg outlets where the food actually tastes as it should. The apples are crisp and juicy because they haven’t spent months in storage, the carrots are bursting with flavour and the cauliflowers last more than a couple of days before getting black spots all over them. We really are spoilt. There’s even an abundance of wineries and breweries that produce some amazing drops.

Not everything is organic and I don’t pretend to live organically. I would love to be able to, but I always say, it’s far better to eat fresh, non organic food than it is to eat old organic food. So if you have access and the means to get everything organic, great. But if you can’t, just get the best food your budget will allow.

The only thing better than this is if you were to grow these things yourself. I understand not everyone has the area available to them to do this, but we all have access to markets and stores that aren’t massive corporations paying their producers bare minimum for their own maximum profits. Which is another benefit of dealing much closer with the farmer. You know they are getting far more of the money for their work.

So eat fresh, eat local and everyone wins. You may even find that your health improves, meaning more energy, better recovery and eventually better performance with all that good food in you.
Run Well
Chris O’Driscoll.

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